er _any_ circumstances is indispensable. Althorp
appeared the most indispensable man the other day, but that was only
because his friends and the fools in the House of Commons kept
bawling out that he was so till they persuaded him, themselves, and
everybody else that it really was the case. Who would have dared to
say that this Government could have gone on without either Stanley
in one House or Lord Grey in the other? But anybody would have been
scouted as mad who had argued that it would go on just as well when
deprived of both of them. The Chancellor's amazing talents--his
eloquence, sarcasm, and varied powers--can never fail to produce
considerable effect; but in the House of Lords the field is narrow
for the display of these qualities, the audience is cold and
unfriendly, and he has excited such a general feeling of personal
animosity against himself, and has done such irreparable injury to
his character--having convinced all the world that he is desperately
ambitious, false, capricious, intriguing, and governed by no
principle, and under the influence of no sentiment of honour--that
his influence is exceedingly diminished. Those who are charitably
disposed express their humane conviction that he is mad, and it
probably is not very remote from the truth.[6]

[6] [It is with pain and reluctance that I print these
remarks on Lord Brougham, and several passages in the
preceding pages of these Memoirs which are equally
severe, and in some respects, I think, exaggerated. But
I certainly do not feel myself justified in withholding
them. They were all revised and corrected by the author
himself with great care; and nothing but a true and
full account of the sentiments which Lord Brougham's
conduct had excited amongst his colleagues and
contemporaries at that time can account for the
catastrophe which awaited him, and which excluded him
for the rest of his life from official life and
employment.]

Henry Taylor brought me a parcel of letters to frank to Southey
the other day; they are from Newton, Cowper's nephew (I think to
W. Thornton), and they are to supply Southey with materials for
Cowper's Life, which he is writing. There is one curious fact
revealed in these letters, which accounts for much of Cowper's
morbid state of mind and fits of depression, as well as for the
circumstance of his ru